How are you going to do all this beard maintenance? The easiest way is to just go online and shop all the necessary beard kits.

But you just don’t want to do this.

It’s not the amount of money that you have to spend, even though it can be considerable. Especially, if you’re too generous with the amount of products that you apply on your beard or if the brands that you choose are pricey.

It’s more about the fact that you’re the type of beard owner that wants the best for his beard. Your beard is like your child, you want to nurture it and grow it to be healthy and strong. And you want to provide it the best, for its well-being, nutrition.

So, you want to cook for it (here’s the keyword we’ve been looking for). You want to prepare all these homemade goodies for your beard, and do everything on your own.

After all, you don’t want fast food for your child on a daily basis, do you?

Beard oil is one of the conditioning products which are excellent for any beard. It’s perfect for all beard styles and lengths. When you start growing a beard, beard oil can be more than necessary, especially if it’s itchy as hell. When your beard grows longer, beard oil is once again essential.

What ingredients do you need to make beard oil on your own?

As you read through this post, you’ll get a good understanding of how simple and fast it can be to make your own beard oil recipe. All you need is a bottle, few drops of essential oils and another few drops of carrier oils. You mix everything in the bottle and that’s it!

But what’s the deal with these oils anyway?

Why do you need these ones specifically?

Carrier Oils

Carrier oils are named after their property, and that is to “carry” the essential oils which would otherwise be harmful for the skin. Essential oils if used without the carrier, they could cause skin irritation and burns.

The carrier oil is used to dilute the essential oils in your homemade beard oil. For this reason, the main ingredient in a beard oil recipe is a carrier oil and the essential oils are a few drops each within the solution.

But that’s not it. Besides their bulk property, carrier oils are easily absorbed by skin and they, many times, have therapeutic effect, depending on the type.

The main reason to use carrier oils is because of their properties.

Most of carrier oils are vegetable oils which are derived from seeds, nuts or kernels.

Common carrier oils that many of the best beard oils share are jojoba, argan, sweet almond, coconut oil. All proved to be great for beard softening, promoting beard growth and nourishing the skin.

Take for example jojoba oil, with a molecular structure similar to sebum oil -the oil produced by the scalp, doesn’t interfere with the scalp’s Ph balance. Besides that, numerous studies have shown that it’s excellent for hair health and growth.

Coconut oil, apart from being absolutely delicious in food, prevents hair damage, retains moisture and conditions the hair. It’s also great again beard dandruff -or beardruff.

Argan oil makes your beard more manageable and softer, while conditioning it. When used in a beard oil, you’ll also appreciate the skin moisturising properties that prevent it from drying. This practically means that beard itch is reduced or even eliminated.

Now, take all the above carrier oils and blend them together in a single beard oil. Doesn’t it feel awesome already?

Because of all these great properties, many commercial beard oils always contain one or more of the above carrier oils. All you have to do is check out the ingredients list and see for yourself.

Tip: Be careful with the shelf life of carrier oils. Many of them last only for a few months

List of Carrier Oils

Below I included a list of all carrier oils to choose from, according to your skin type or preference. I hope, it will give you couple of ideas for your beard oil recipe/experiment. You can use either one of them as a base or even more with different proportions.

If you don’t want to go through the entire list of carrier oils, you can have a look at the below. They are among the most commonly used oils for beard oils and you can’t go wrong selecting any of them.

Essential Oils

Essential oils come mostly from roots, flowers, peels, berries or even wood. The have a strong scent and they give your beard oil recipe extra health benefits such as Vitamin E and many other depending on the type you choose.

Essential oils are the ones that spice up the beard oil. This type of oil is going to give the main scent of the beard oil recipe. You can be super creative and mix different essential oils every time you try a new recipe. In most cases, you won’t need more than 10 drops of an essential oil.

Even though you can try mixing many different beard oils, you need to be very careful and try different proportions. Every drop of essential oil matters, and this could be the cause of completely ruining an entire batch of beard oil.

Note: You’re only 1 or 2 drops away before you make a beard oil horrible

List of Essential Oils

The list of essential oils is huge and I’m pretty sure I missed a lot of them. Check them out and get creative.

Essential Oils

Allspice Oil

Angelica Oil

Anise Oil

Basil Oil

Benzoin Oil

Bergamot Oil

Birch Oil

Bitter almond Oil

Black pepper Oil

Boldo Oil

Buchu Oil

Cajuput Oil

Calamus Oil

Camomile Oil

Camphor Oil

Caraway Oil

Cardamom Oil

Carrot seed Oil

Cassia Oil

Catnip Oil

Cedarwood Oil

Cinnamon Oil

Citronella Oil

Clary Sage Oil

Clove Oil

Coriander Oil

Cumin Oil

Cypress Oil

Davana Oil

Dill Oil

Elemi Oil

Eucalyptus Oil

Fennel Oil

Frankincense Oil

Galbanum Oil

Geranium Oil

Ginger Oil

Grapefruit Oil

Helicrysum Oil

Hyssop Oil

Jasmine Oil

Juniper Oil

Lavandin Oil

Lavender Oil

Lemon Oil

Lemongrass Oil

Lime Oil

Mandarin Oil

Manuka Oil

Marjoram Oil

Melissa Oil

Mugwort Oil

Mullein Oil

Mustard Oil

Myrrh Oil

Myrtle Oil

Neroli Oil

Niaouli Oil

Nutmeg Oil

Oakmoss Oil

Orange Oil

Oregano Oil

Palma Rosa Oil

Parsley Oil

Patchouli Oil

Pennyroyal Oil

Peppermint Oil

Petitgrain Oil

Pimento Oil

Pine Oil

Ravensara Oil

Rose Oil

Rosemary Oil

Rosewood Oil

Rue Oil

Sage Oil

Sandalwood Oil

Spearmint Oil

Spikenard Oil

Tagetes Oil

Tangerine Oil

Tansy Oil

Tarragon Oil

Tea Tree Oil

Thuja Oil

Thyme Oil

Tuberose Oil

Vanilla Oil

Vetiver Oil

Wintergreen Oil

Wormwood Oil

Yarrow Oil

Just like I did with the carrier oils, I gathered a few essential oils sets that can get you started. The following are among the most common used essential oils for beard oil recipes.

Anything else I need to make the beard oil recipe?

So far, you got the main ingredients that your great homemade beard oil recipe needs. But these ingredients cannot get mixed by themselves, can they?

Bottles

The first thing you will need is a bottle. Usually a 1oz bottle is enough. There are commercial beard oils that come with 2 oz bottles but in my opinion, it’s not the best choice especially if it’s the first time trying the brand out.

Besides, just like commercial oils, if you haven’t tried a particular recipe before, you might want to avoid making too much beard oil in the first place.

Dark glass bottles are more common for beard oils. Wondering why is that?

Dark glass doesn’t allow sunlight and this way, this type of bottles block the potentially harmful sunlight and protect the oils from oxidation. The bottles ensure that shelf life and quality remains unaffected.

And there’s more.

Since it contains different oils, the density and weight of each one of them is different. Even though you mix and steer the different oils in the bottle, after a certain point there will probably be an oil separation and it will look as if there are layers of oils in the bottle.

That is actually kinda true. Why do you think that the vast majority of detergent and personal care products have no transparent bottles? Well, now you know why!

Eye Dropper

If you want to make the best beard oil recipe at home like a pro, you will also need to have an eye dropper.

The eye dropper will be a great tool, not only to measure the doses of essential oil in the mix but also, when the beard oil is ready, to apply it directly on your beard, hands, brush or anywhere you may find appropriate.

If you want to keep the budget lower, you can consider getting a bottle for the beard oil, that already has an eye dropper integrated with the lit.

More tools for the Pros

If you are looking to take things more seriously, you can also add additional tools in your beard oil process for larger quantities and you can make your kitchen a beard oil lab. Examples of such products could be:

No matter if you’re making one bottle or one container of beard oil, funnels come in handy.

They’re very practical when you mix different oils together during testing and makes the process mess-free. Now, when you’re done with your testing, you want to put the different oils of your homemade beard oil in a container. Again, a funnel seems to be the most appropriate tool to use.

Even though this isn’t necessary at all in your beard oil recipe making, a nice box to store all your beard oils as well as the carrier and essential oils you haven’t used doesn’t seem such a bad idea.

Such box is also great if you’re planning to make beard oil at home and offer the box with the oils as a gift.

Did I miss anything?

Ah yes! How are you supposed to remember what’s inside the beard oil bottle? Get some stickers, so you can put the beard oil recipe name and ingredients on it.

Finally, instructions on how to make this beard oil recipe I came for!

As explained, making beard oil is pretty straightforward. The process is simple but getting the beard oil right is a bit tricky.

This has to do with the ingredients that you put and the dosage of each ingredient. Rest assured, that you can easily mess a recipe up by being greedy. By putting more oil, or less than required, from a particular ingredient you can make an otherwise pleasant beard oil, completely unbearable.

1. Bottle? Check!

Get the bottle first and get ready to fill most of it with the base (carrier) oil. Depending on the recipe, it could be either 1 or a combination of more carrier oils.

2. Carrier oils

Fill the bottle with the carrier oil(s) using a funnel. This way, you won’t make a mess with oil all over the bottle and in your kitchen.

3. Time for essential oils

Now it’s time to add the essential oils in the bottle. Usually, few drops of essential oils are more than enough to give the desired scent to the beard oil. However, this always depends on the recipe.

So, get the eye dropper that we talked about earlier, and pour a few drops of the essential oils in the bottle with the carrier oils.

If it’s your first time making your own beard oil, try to stick to the recipe doses. Otherwise, there are great chances that you’ll throw away the first batch. Been there, done that…

4. Shake it

The fun part begins. Close the lit of the bottle and start shaking it like there’s no tomorrow. Half a minute of shaking should be enough.

5. Drink it!

Well, I really hope you didn’t drink it. The beard oil should be ready to be applied directly on your beard. Others may leave it for a few days to sit, in order for the oils to bind with each other. Enjoy!

Less talk, more recipes please. Gimme beard oil recipes!

We talked about the simple instructions on how to make beard oil at home, now it’s time for some recipes. As said, you can be creative and try different oil combinations and doses that will give you the perfect scent.

To make things easier for you, I included links to the ingredients that I found online so you can purchase them directly. Few ingredients are included in several beard oil recipes and I decided to have a link to the online stores only once.

Here are the best beard oil recipes for you. I tried already three of them and the results were surprisingly good. Let me know if you try any of them.

Seriously? Now, you want to start a beard oil business?

I know that you like the beard oil and you want to try making a beard oil recipe already. Many of you might already dream about making gazzilions out of beard oil sales! And why not?

If you’re like me, you want to start a business out of anything you understand and believe you can do with no complicated business models. Well, this doesn’t mean that all business ventures are successful, but you never know until you try it.

If you experiment yourself with different homemade beard oil recipes, you might find one that could potentially make a killer product on the market. Why not start producing your own branded beard oil and start selling it on the internet. How do you think all these companies on Etsy do it anyway?

Want to know how can you do it? Maybe this could be another post. I’m already thinking that this could be a 10,000 words guide.

Few tips when making a beard oil at home

Be extra careful with the recipe when it comes to carrier and essential oils proportion. Just keep in mind that essential oils can be aggressive to your skin. If the volume of essential oils is high, you can get all kinds of skin related problems. A good rule of thumb is to put no more than 5% essential oils in the total volume.

You can make fragrance-free beard oils, meaning that there’s no need to apply any essential oils in the mix. Just make a mix of carrier oils and that’s it.

No matter if you make a scented or a scent-free beard oil, Vitamin E is a great addition to any batch. Besides being good for the skin and hair, Vitamin E increases the shelf life of beard oil and it’s an antioxidant.

When you follow a recipe, use your head. If you feel that the essential oils volume is way too much, don’t bother making it. We already talked about how dangerous essential oils can be to your skin.

Prefer glass bottles to plastic. There’s a good reason why premium carrier and essential oils come in glass themselves. The keep the oil fresh and shelf life is kept unaffected.

Same thing applies with the color of the bottle. Amber glass bottles protect the oil from sun as the heat and the UV rays can deteriorate the oil.

Bottles with dropper caps are more convenient when it comes to application. There’s no waste during application and you use many drops as you want. In addition, it doesn’t make a mess.

Before using any beard oil, either homemade or even one that you bought in a store, give it a shake before application. Just like all oils, there might be an oil separation if the beard oil sits for some time.

Wrapping up

Making your own beard oil recipe at home is both easy and fun. It’s the idea and feeling of experimenting and creating something out of nothing. This is something that excites a man since he discovered the wheel.

You can try different combinations of carrier and essential oils and maybe you’ll come up with an awesome mix. In any case, the whole process will be a lot of fun.

And, once you’ve tried making every beard oil recipe combination possible, take your creativity one step further with a homemade beard balm recipe. Similar process and easy to make.

Do you have any beard oil recipes you want to share?

# Bonus

I found a great video by Patrick Miller on youtube with a very interesting beard oil recipe. The last ingredient is super surprizing. Enjoy!

Resources

The below websites were used for the lists of carrier and essential oils

All information on The Manliness Kit is meant for educational and informational purposes only. The statements on this website have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Products and/or information are not intended to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent any disease. Readers are advised to do their own research and make decisions in partnership with their health care provider. If you are pregnant, nursing, have a medical condition or are taking any medication, please consult your physician.

Wet shaving enthusiast, ex-beard wearer and proud blogger of the Manliness Kit. Besides my interest in man grooming, I'm also a gadget geek (where most of my spare income goes), and passionate football (soccer) fan. I've got a beautiful girlfriend who puts up with me and my hobbies on daily basis and for that, I 'm very grateful.

Very nice article! One problem, though. I tried the Earthy recipe up there, but after a month or so, the scent had vanished, All there was left was the carrier oil smell (almond) and it kinda smells like cooking oil. Is there any secret way to mix the oils, or to add a fixative, or whatever, I dunno, all I know is that it doesn’t last as it should.

Hey Alexandre, thanks for your comment. I haven’t tried the particular recipe and I’m afraid that I will just speculate what happened. There are many reasons why this happened. I can think of the experation date of essential oils, the bottle that you used (prefer amber glass bottle), exposure to sunlight, location of oil was a very warm room. As far as I’m aware there’s no special way to mix the oils since they will all end up in the same mix.

My suggestion to you is to give the recipe one more try with different brands and see how it works. Let me know your thoughts.

Do certain carrier oils hold the scent of essential oils longer than others? (Throughout the day)

I’ve purchased pre-mixed beard oils in the past and recently made a few batches of my own, but the fragrance seems to fade faster than those I bought. What’s the deal? (Carrier oils used were mostly Almond and Avocado.)

There quite a few reasons behind this. I’ll name a few:
Brand of essential oils. Not all brands have the same quality.
Remaining shelf life. Many essentials oils, especially cold pressed, have a shelf life of less than 6 months.
Stored location has high temperature.
Combination of essential oils might not make the perfect blend in terms of fragrance.
The percentage of essential oils was extremely low. Maybe try couple drops more in the mix?
The bottle that you used wasn’t sealed properly.
The bottle that you used was plastic. Prefer amber glass bottles that block UV rays.
It just happens…

Sorta — sone carrier oils are made up of smaller molecules, thus allowing the carrier oil(s) to deliver the EOs and penetrate the skin more effectively (and possibly allowing the EO blend’s scent to last longer). For example, high-quality (cold-pressed, unrefined, organic) grapeseed oil, marula oil, and hazelnut oil would serve these purposes.
However, this would more likely be explained by the inclusion (versus the exclusion) of essential oils that hold “base” notes in blends. Examples of these would be myrrh, patchouli, & sandalwood — or due to different proportions in base notes (to basically hold the top + middle notes of the other EOs, sticking them to the skin) &/or to sourcing higher-quality, unadulterated EOs.

Totally kicked!! Awesome post. Now I want to start my own beard oil business 😉 Let’s say I want to make 5 liters of beard oil and the oils I will be using are jojoba oil and tea tree. What is the ideal quantity of each, I should be using to get it just right. Please help!!

Hey Deekshith, glad you liked the article. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the chance to respond to you quickly but I see that you received an awesome response already. As a rule of thumb, try to have approx. 80%-90% carrier oils and the rest, essential oils. Try small batches first, see what you like and upon that, produce larger volume.

Hi Deekshith, if I might hope in here and give my 2 cents on your question…

Ok, so, let me first answer your question with some basics.

5 liters of oil is about 169 ounces of beard oil. 1.0-2.0 oz is what many beard oils come in and that lasts many of us for months, depending on the length of our beards and how often and how much we apply.

Some carrier oils will go rancid more quickly then others depending on the bottle used, how its stored and the oil itself. So I would suggest you do some longevity testing with your carrier oil before mixing up a huge batch like that. 😀

Good news is, Jojoba oil has a pretty long shelf life, and if kept in a dark contain and in the fridge, it could potentially last for years before it gets “funky”. If your business does well, you would see it all go out the door faster then it could go bad. But when I personally buy beard oils, I buy from places who make small batches so I know its fresh. Just something to ponder.

Doing the math based on the recipe provided above by John, you would want approximately 5tsp of Jojoba oil to every 1.5tsp of Tea Tree Oil, but since you didn’t mention the Cedarwood oil, you’re going to need to fiddle to get the mix just right.

I personally would suggest adding Peppermint Oil in at the 1tsp ratio used in the recipe, since it’s minty, keeping the theme of your oil minty and adds a layer of scent to it beyond just tea tree. And it makes mixing it all a bit more flexible. And this is not an exact science, you will want to mix in smaller batches, try it, then note your final mix ratios for larger mixing. Don’t want to mix up a hundred dollars worth of oils not knowing what you will get. 😀

I’d suggest around .67L per unit of each oil. So, that would be somewhere around:

3.35L of Jojoba Oil
1.05L of Tea Tree Oil
.67L of Peppermint Oil

Or if you wish to keep it just the two oils,
3.8L of Jojoba Oil
1.2L of Tea Tree Oil

Again, potency will vary from oil to oil, so these numbers are just a guide. I would mix it up in the exact 1oz (or whatever small size you want to sell in) and test, adjust, repeat, and then scale it up when done. But I’d also say only mix up a batch based on orders so it’s fresh. Maybe even date and put a batch number on each bottle, noting its hand mixed, so the customer isn’t expecting perfect identical product every single time.

Anyway, I hope this answers your question. Good luck. And remember, what you think is a good receipe may not be what others do (I’ve had some oils that were way too strong, and way too weak and I had to add my own oil to fix them). But most importantly, have fun!

I just mixed up a blend that was inspired by some of the recipes in this post, plus my own likes. It’s very minty and invigorating, but has layers of scents you catch as it’s on your beard. When you smell it in the bottle, you smell lemon, rosemary and just a tinge of mint. But on your beard and face, it screams peppermint with layers of lemon, frankincense and rosemary.

Just add all of the oils, shake well, and do a skin test first. Then give it a whirl on your beard.

I went a little heavy on the Peppermint by doing 5 drops, I could feel it in my eyes and my sinuses at first but after 10 or so minutes my face just feels tingle and alive. You can catch the layers of lemon and Frankincense slowly wafting upwards into your sniffer while your face sings out in happiness.

As John said, go easy on the drops of EO, you can always add more, and 1-2 drops can be the difference between amazing and a desperate need to dilute the mix.

Note I like to use 4oz bottles for my mixes. The 2oz of carrier oils gives me plenty of room for the essential oils, and room to add more carrier oils if it’s too potent. You can easily move it to a small dropper bottle once you are happy with the mix after that.

That’s a great recipe Robn, thanks for sharing. I’ll give it a try as well but I think, I might replace the pepermint with Vitamin E and maybe put fewer drops of Tea Tree. I like the selection of essential oils though!

Thanks for the recipes! With the Spring Breeze Oil, is it really 1 tsp of tea tree oil? It seems like a lot. I made a batch and it smells mostly of… You guessed it, tea tree oil. Has anyone else tried this recipe? If so what are you thoughts on it?

Try increasing the carrier oils so you can dilute the tea tree. The thing is that you either love or hate Tea Tree oil since it’s got a particularly strong scent. Let me know if you have any other questions.

I want to create an unscented batch as the smell usually takes over my cologne. I also want to get the best of the best out of the carrier oils. Can I evenly mix I batch of 8 carrier oils or is that too much? Could it work?

It’s not too much but you might want to consider what you want to achieve with this number of oils. I assume that you want to have an unscented oil. With this in mind, you want your oil to make your beard softer and more manageable, moisturise the skin and absorbed by hair and skin quickly. With this in mind, the best oils would be argan, jojoba, grapeseed and apricot. By including so many carrier oils, it means that you’ll get less out of the best oils, especially if they’re evenly mixed. Again, all these oils can work together (I would recommend adding vitamin E in the mix) but the question is: are you getting any additional benefits from doing so?

Hey Keenan, thanks for your comment. Yes, this is quite typical, depending on the amount of essential oils in the mix and the actual oils. Some oils have stronger scent than others. However, this is the feeling that also I get when I apply beard oil. But it’s only me who has this impression and not the others around me since I get used to the scent after a few minutes. In my opinion (and personal preference) the scent shouldn’t be very strong since an overpowering scent right under your nose might be a bit too much.

So its my first time trying beard oil and I have decided to make my own as its lot locally available to buy. I have only got one ingredient till now which is the jojoba oil. But still cant decide what essential oils should I mix. I want to have something similar to my perfume which I use frequently as I get many good comments on its scent. My Perfume is 212 VIP Men Carolina Herrera. I would like to know your suggestion on which essential oils should I use to get something similar and what quantities ??
Thanks Very Much

Thanks for the great tips. So can I come to a conclusion that all i need is some good quality carrier oil ( i will use coconut oil)? Because at my place I am finding it hard to get some good quality essential oil. And I do not care much about fragrance. Please let me know.

Hi Ron thanks for the comment. A good beard oil heavily depends on the carrier oils. The rest is fragrance really. You can try making a blend of jojoba, sweet almond and grapeseed oil. Argan, hemp seed and apricot kernel are also great. Coconut oil should be mixed with another oil as in most cases, it’s in solid form.

Hey Jay. There’s no right or wrong answer here. A safe blend is 95% carrier and 5% essential oils. Then it’s really up to your preference when it comes to 5% of essential oils as different blends will give you different scents.

I have been doing a lot of research on creating beard oils but have yet to make any yet. This is a very informative article. I just want to add some info. There are 3 ways to mix EO.
First is by sedative vs stimulating category. Second is by scent, that being floral, exotic, resin, spice, woodsy , herbal and citrus. Third is by note, that being top, middle and base.
Once one decides on category. KISS keep it super simple with 2 or 3 EO.